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Earth Power Science Technology

Can We Really Stop Climate Change By 'Capturing' Carbon? (vox.com) 275

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The recently-ratified Paris Climate Accord calls on countries to keep the rise in average global temperatures under 2 degrees Celsius (a threshold which would bring extreme weather, water shortages and reduced agricultural production). But a recent article on Vox warns that "the world has to zero out net carbon emissions...for a good chance of avoiding 2 degrees, by around 2065. After that, emissions have to go negative... We are betting our species' future on our ability to bury carbon."

That's why everyone's watching the W.A. Parish Generating Station in Texas, which came online this week -- on schedule, and under budget. "The plant will use a newly installed system to capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide created during combustion."

Alas, Slashdot reader Dan Drollette brings bad news from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: To fight climate change with carbon capture and storage technology, we'd have to complete one new carbon capture facility every working day for the next 70 years. It's better to switch to a diet of energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables, rather than rely on this technology as a kind of emergency planetary liposuction.
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Can We Really Stop Climate Change By 'Capturing' Carbon?

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  • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @01:43PM (#53038141)

    I just wish there were some way to genetically modify a plant that could suck CO2 out of the air and turn it into oxygen or something else harmless. You think with all our knowledge, someone could figure out how to make something like that.

    • just wish there were some way to genetically modify a plant that could suck CO2 out of the air and turn it into oxygen or something else harmless.

      That could work, except you'd have to convince the energy industry not to kill the motherfucking plant so it can drill and frack.

      https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]

      • Yes, because everyone know, you have to mow down thousands of acres of trees to build a platform and processing area that is smaller than one acre in size...

        Oh that's right, you basically don't destroy any trees to frack. Very empty headed logic, or you just don't understand the science behind drilling.

    • by aardvarkjoe ( 156801 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @01:48PM (#53038171)

      Dream on. Next you'll be wanting us to make it solar powered and turn the excess carbon into building material.

    • Absolutely useless. Where do you think that all the carbon we're pumping into the atmosphere by burning coal came from? Plants.

      Planting trees today doesn't permanently remove carbon - the Fort McMurray fire earlier this year represents 10% of all Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. Burying it won't work either - it will just rot and produce methane - more than an order of magnitude worse as a greenhouse gas.

      The only solution, both short and long term, is to stop burning stuff.

      • Planting trees today doesn't permanently remove carbon - [...] The only solution, both short and long term, is to stop burning stuff

        If you plant trees, cut them down, and make stuff out of them, you are sequestering carbon. I would actually advocate for bamboo, because it grows much faster.

    • Good luck. Genetic Engineering is the other boogy man.
      You have the conservatives denying global warming. And the liberals fear mongering genetic engineering.

      I remember a decade ago they came up with a biodegradable plastic made from genetically engineered corn. The environmentalist protested against it because it was GMO.

      True environmentalism is understanding the consequences of the choices and choosing the best option to solve the biggest problem.
      There is no magical solution. Just picking the best trade

    • Try algae instead. There's far more ocean than land surface, and we're not using any of it.

      There's still the problem of how to permanently fix the captured carbon though, ideally without turning it into more carbonic acid.

      • Try algae instead. There's far more ocean than land surface, and we're not using any of it.

        Algae is a small plant, it's not an animal or a vegetable or a mushroom.

    • Why not genetically modify the plants to combine the C02 with some H20 and produce hydro-carbon fuel, why we are at it.

  • Wind and natural gas (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @01:54PM (#53038187) Homepage Journal
    Carbon capture was a technology that was useful in the US when it was thought coal would remain the primary fuel. Now that natural gas is dirt cheap, partially thanks to fracking, it is not so critical. Natural gas produces about half the CO2 per BTU as dirty coal. Switching from coal should reduce emissions at least 40%. In fact Texas can meet standards by shutting down a few very dirty plants and moving to natural gas.

    But what is going to change everything is when the rest of the US follows Texas which now gets at least 10% of the power from renewables, mostly wind. This is where the climate change problem will begin to decline.

    Which is not to say the carbon capture technology is dead. In other developing countries it may be useful,and the US could be the supplier for those systems.

    • by tsa ( 15680 )

      40% is not zero by a very long shot. We should get rid of fossil fuels as soon as possible. Having said that, it pains me that my country (the Netherlands), which was the forerunner in nature-friendly technology in the 1990s is now way behind even the US in implementing the necessary steps to reduce CO2 emissions. We're gearing up to elections for a new parliament in March, but none of the parties that matter has even mentioned the environment in their party propaganda yet. We're a small country but one of

    • by Rei ( 128717 )

      Personally, I hate all of these "arguments through incredulity" that you encounter whenever it comes from energy, trying to argue that we can't expand fossil fuels fast enoigh, alternative fuels, solar power, wind power, nuclear power, you name it based on your ideology, fast enough to meet demand. It's always along the lines of "We'd have to build X units every Y days, and doesn't that numver sound impossibly large?"

      Well, *everything* we do with energy is on unthinkably large scales. We spend a huge chun

      • It's amazing what 6billion people can do if they work together (or even work vaguely towards similar desires).
    • I'm sick of people citing in despair the overwhelming amount of work it would take to slow climate change. Yes, it will take a lot of wind turbines and carbon capture and solar cells. But we are really good at producing things - literally better than anyone can imagine. We make 165,000 new cars every single day. We need about 500,000 wind turbines to replace coal. If we made wind turbines at the same rate as cars, it would take us one week to get rid of coal.

  • How long before the CO2 captured by this generation plant and injected into oil wells leaks out again?

    What was the point again?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      That's not the only problem. We haven't yet experienced all the effects of the CO2 already emitted even if you don't include the knock-on effects like melting of permafrost causing emission of methane. So whatever we do, unless we actually decrease the atmospheric CO2 level, we're going to continue to get increased global warming, though some areas are predicted to experience the exact opposite. E.g. the gulf stream has been slowing, which may lead to Europe, especially Ireland and Britain, experiencing

    • One of the major points is to make it look as if we're doing something to allow the fossil fuel companies to continue to rake in the cash.

  • 2nd- and 3rd-world countries say:

    But we want to join the 1st-world countries on the world stage! LOL we'll do what we want, and we've got nice cheap coal to burn to slingshot us up with the Big Boys! Saving the planet can wait, LOL, it's not going to really be a problem for a few hundred years, why should we care? We're more interested in next week!

    It's hard to get people to care about something that's even decades away when they're more concerned about next week.

    • What do you mean, next week? You missed Hurricane Matthew? The increase in severity of forest fires, droughts, etc? It's already here.
      • Oh well that's terrible that that happened to those people, good thing that those things don't happen here.

        And the further away it is, the less real it is to them, and the less they actually are emotionally impacted by it.

  • Nuclear (Score:4, Insightful)

    by johannesg ( 664142 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @02:38PM (#53038353)

    So what is it going to be: mess up the entire planet, or build the safest nuclear plants we can and perhaps mess up one tiny spot every few centuries? Keep burning coal in endless quantities, or choose a completely emission-free technology?

    And no, pointing to decades old plants that were in at least one case made by people with zero safety standards does not count as evidence of danger. The true danger is destroying our world; we will certainly do better if we limit that danger to the best nucleair plants we can build.

    • Hear, hear. The people telling you that "It's better to switch to a diet of energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables" are completely out of touch with reality. While the first world is busy sprinkling their landscapes with renewables and prematurely shutting down nuclear plants, the global share of clean energy is actually declining, [ted.com] and the reason is quite simple: growth. Before advocating unrealistic solutions based on ideology, please educate yourself. [withouthotair.com]

      There are already billions doing without,

      • Nuclear has long been skewed positively to support weapon making with it. You may build a more or less safe nuclear plant in theory, but usually that's not happening for economic reasons. Also in the case of a major nuclear incident, the company running the reactors simply declares bankruptcy and lets the taxpayer pay for the damage. Look at Japan for how its done. That is yet another subvention of the technology.

        Also, nuclear is not a clean energy. Its dirty like coal. The only difference is that coal make

        • It's not "dirty like coal". Coal gives you _guaranteed_ dirt, plus the additional _guarantee_ of killing the planet. Nuclear does neither. That means nuclear is by far the preferable option.

    • So what is it going to be: mess up the entire planet, or build the safest nuclear plants we can and perhaps mess up one tiny spot every few centuries? Keep burning coal in endless quantities, or choose a completely emission-free technology?

      Your logical fallacy is: false dichotomy.

      Do you want to try again, without logical fallacies? Or would you just like to retire in disgrace?

  • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @03:26PM (#53038487) Journal

    "We are betting our species' future on our ability to bury carbon."

    Seriously? What do 97% of climate scientists agree on? I'll tell you, it's not that.

    This kind of hyperbole is what turns people into climate change deniers. Very few scientists think AGW will cause the destruction of the human race.

  • by prefec2 ( 875483 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @03:41PM (#53038527)

    First, we have to phase out CO2 by 2050 or 2040 (1.5 deg C). Second, we do not need fancy carbon capture tech. We can rely on plant growth and reforestation programs which actually work. We had a few of those. Also we have to help countries to protect their forests. Also helpful would be to reduce meat production.

  • by rasmusbr ( 2186518 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @03:54PM (#53038557)

    So we're talking about 250 new installations per year. I'm assuming that's for the whole industrial world. That's something like 2 new plants per year per industrialised country. That is not a lot if you compare it with what the industrial world built built back in the 1950's and 1960's after WW2. Sounds reasonable in terms of volume of work.

    I mean it sounds reasonable when you first think about it. But I don't know...

    I mean it would take work. It would take actual investment in actual projects, and actual political decisions about actual things. You know, those old-fashioned secondary sector of the economy things that we're not suppose to have to bother with in the modern world. We'd even have to hire actual workers to do actual work. Like, physically do work. Like, non-office work.

    And you'd have to train people to do it too! I you think about it, you'd have to train unemployed people so that they could take these construction and planning jobs.

    Seriously? There ought to be a way to solve global climate change in some reasonable way. Like by inventing a new financial scheme, or by making a new smartphone app. Or at least by having drones or self-driving cars do all the work. I'm sure someone will think of something.

  • by WSOGMM ( 1460481 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @04:16PM (#53038623)

    It takes effort to limit your energy consumption. Especially when it comes to vehicles. Get off your asses and stand at a bus stop instead, bike to work, carpool if you have to.

    Lead by example and lay down the groundwork for others to follow in your footsteps.

    Fight to the bitter end with your dollar. Don't be complacent.

    Seriously. The only reason this shit is perpetuating is because of the choices that you're making right now.

    • It takes effort to limit your energy consumption. Especially when it comes to vehicles. Get off your asses and stand at a bus stop instead, bike to work, carpool if you have to.

      Oh, my sweet summer child. By spending more of your time and energy on transportation to show how hard you're sticking it to the man, you're just wasting time you could be using actually sticking it to the man. Meanwhile, if you use less energy, that just leaves more for war. If you don't burn up that fuel they'll put it into a bomber and use it to bomb some brown people.

      Fight to the bitter end with your dollar. Don't be complacent.

      If you mean we should be building fuel-air bombs, then there may be something to what you say. But it's bullshit to think that you can cha

  • Capturing carbon will protect us from anthropogenic climate change as well as garlic will protect us from vampires, and for the same reason.
  • It was a poor article. Yes CCS can grab the Carbon coming out of the exhaust stacks but what is missed is the fact that the process requires a lot of energy. The article doesn't mention anything about it but other plants have systems that require 30% to 40% of the electricity generated by the plant. So the plant has to produce a lot more electricity just to get production back to what it was. And then there are the emissions and waste generated from the additional mining and transportation of the extra c

  • "The lack of humility before nature that's being displayed here, uh... staggers me."

  • Because "climate change" is too broad and nebulous a term.
    And the people looking for grant money LIKE it that way. You can basically wrangle ANY sort of phenomenon in Earth's atmosphere into some definition of "climate change". Basically there is no bottom to this well.

    Also, climate change is a NATURAL process. Earth's climate has been changing since basically FOREVER.

    Now, can we stop "man made climate change/global warming"?

    Maybe. If we sequester enough carbon out of the atmosphere. It may make a diff

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